Good god. Some of you people have no sense of history or national purpose.
The
Barbary Pirates Wars sums up everything. These series of wars took place in the Mediterranean Sea in the early 19th century. Europeans, wealthy from their excursions across the world via colonialism, were content with paying ransoms and tolls for passage through this sea. The U.S., at its birth and infancy, could not afford to pay such things to secure its export/import businesses. Therefore, we went to war. And even though having to take a break in these wars to satisfy the British's desires to attack the U.S. in 1812, American Marines and Sailors wound up defeating the Barbary Pirates and solved the problem for everybody (even Europeans).
In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine had said that further efforts by European governments to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed by the United States of America as acts of aggression requiring US intervention. At the very end of the 19th century, the Spanish-American War brought America into the colonial game in a few locales (Cuba, Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico).
At the turn of the century, American Marines had to aid European nations in China. Aside from France, Germany, Japan, and Russia carving out spheres of influence in China, America had some "stock" in the existing Chinese government. Our role in the Boxer Rebellion was about securing more of our import/export stabilities.
Of course, Europe starts World War I, which disrupts our import/export trade stabilities. With their inabilities to figure it out, Americans eventually venture out into their world to secure it. In 1941, Japan tests us and force us to defend security. But once again Europeans couldn't figure out their own messes onn their continent, so Americans have to eventually cross the ocean to restore import/export trade securities.
And after WWII? When all of Europe's powers withdraw from their former colonies to licke their self inflicted wounds? The Soviet Union filled much of the voids and by the 1950s held influence over most of the world. America stood alone as the only force that could deal with a globe on the verge. The import/export world for the free world was endangered and since America didn't have a "big brother," we began to play the Cold War game. We often enough shelved our morals and values to beat the Soviets to the dictators and the populations, especially in the Middle East where oil had consumed the world as the ulitmate resource to build military and civilization.
After the Cold War, dumb asses began to assume that "our wars were over" as if the history of why we went to war was not an issue any longer. Throughout the 90s, politicians on both sides drew our military down and assumed that the outside world was now some how cooperative and healthy. 9/11 smacked the morons in the face and reminded them that even our two oceans will not protect us from the instabilties and corruptions of entire regions abroad. They claim to hate us for our activities abroad, but they wrap it all up in religious dogma and cultural propoganda. Europeans have been murdered over some cartoonist's idea of free speech. Amongst this wave of fanaticism, are our import/export trade stabilities. Even Somali pirates threaten international water ways (full circle, huh?)
It has been a burden. But it is a burden because Americans want a certain life style. The American military can pull back across the ocean. Slowly, but surely, will be the chinking of our lifestyles and securities as our trade partners abroad come under attack by military neighbors or suffer the famine and disease of a neighbor. Or from having to suffer the flood of refugees that would come from a neighbors internal civil wars. People are ignorant of military affairs, but when it came to Sudan and Rwanda, U.S. Marines were there. While the world refused to intervene, U.S. Marines were busy training neighbors to defend their borders. Chad and Ethiopia were important to containing Sudan's Sharia wreckage from leaking into Djibouti and other locales.
People have this illusion that they can criticize our involvements in little nothing countries or our interventions into other people's affairs, but the truth is that if they could and would handle their own affairs so that they didn't interfere with our global mission, we wouldn't be there.
Protecting America's interests and the freedoms of Americans have far more to do than some simpleton's idea that he must be attacked for his freedoms to be jeapordized. Should NATO step up or individual European nations bear the burden for their own sakes for a change? Hell yeah. 65 years of licking their wounds is enough time to catch your breath. But until we have a "Big Brother" like Europe has, we are stuck fending for ourselves and guiding the world's affairs to our favor.
